


Oh, Don't Ask Why

by Oboeist3



Series: I Used To Have Short Hair [5]
Category: Leverage
Genre: Coming Out, Gen, Implied/Referenced Transphobia, Season 3 Finale, Trans Character, Trans Eliot, well somewhere in between coming out and being outed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-28
Updated: 2018-09-28
Packaged: 2019-07-18 11:13:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,108
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16117223
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Oboeist3/pseuds/Oboeist3
Summary: After San Lorenzo, they scatter. Just like after Sterling, after Kadjic. Unlike the previous times, Nate stops Eliot before he can get on a plane."We need to have a chat, you and I."





	Oh, Don't Ask Why

After San Lorenzo, they scatter. Just like after Sterling, after Kadjic. Unlike the previous times, Nate stops Eliot before he can get on a plane, heading somewhere. Malaysia, he thinks, maybe Singapore. Hardison chose the locations, told him to bring some cup ramen back in two weeks. He's a little dubious over the claims of being the best in the world, but whatever. It's not like it'll cost him much, and his smile's worth it.

"We need to have a chat, you and I." he says, moving him towards the airport's bar. He gets Eliot a beer, himself a cranberry juice. This alone tells him this isn't something companionable, oh no. This is an interrogation.

"What's this about?" he asks, but it's formality more than anything. What else could they be talking about, besides Moreau, his past with him.

"Sophie was right. You don't have to tell her anything. You don't have to tell Hardison or Parker. But you have to tell me. I'm the Mastermind, it's my job to know you guys and make the calls. I can't do that with secrets that big, Spencer. Pasts that come to haunt you."

"There's nothing else. Everything else I ever did, it was piecemeal, confidential. It wasn't all good, but it won't come back. I can promise you that." he says, and he nods, sips at his cranberry juice. His nose scrunches up as he places it back on the table, sighs heavily.

"Good to know. But that was never the problem."

"What do you mean?"

"We can deal with old acquaintances, we can even deal with old enemies. Teams make up for weak points, that's their beauty. I need to know _why_ you worked for him. Your moral compass may be skewed but it's not broken. You've never had a black heart, not like him. That means he had something on you, something so big you did the worst things you ever did. He had leverage. I need to know what it is."

Eliot knows that Nate is right about this. He's a fundamentally flawed man, a drunk, a Catholic, someone who lives more out of spite than happiness, but he's right. When he works with incomplete information, they almost get themselves killed. He can't control that, most of the time, but when it's internal, he could, theoretically.

The problem is trust. He trusts Nate on the job because they have the same goal, and in general because he's a man with good intentions. He has no reason to trust him with something this personal, no precedent to fall on. There's a possibility, slim, but possible, that telling him will get Eliot killed.

"How much do you need to know?" he asks, curls his fingers around the neck of the bottle and turns towards the entrance by a few degrees. Nate's hungover, and not exactly in his physical prime, he could outrun him if it came to that. Hijack a plane, find somewhere to hide out. He notices, of course he does, but that's hardly consequential.

"I don't know. Start general." he says reasonably, shrugs his jacket off his shoulders.

"I needed the money, and I needed it quickly. Small jobs weren't going to cut it, and I was young, I didn't know the business well enough to negotiate for more."

"For your family?"

"No."

"For a vice?" he asks, looking over at Eliot's beer bottle, still unopened.

"No."

"You're going to have to elaborate, Spencer."

"It was...medical." he hisses out, between his teeth. His eyes track from the bar's entrance and back to Nate, waiting for the moment he gets it, that he looks at him with surprise or disgust or hate. He's lived through his fair share.

"Something terminal?"

"More like a pre-existing condition." he says wryly. Hardison would get a kick out of that, the ironic truth of the matter.

"The cost of it makes sense. Medical bills, they can bleed you dry. What was the urgency? You must have dealt with this for most of your life." He inspects Eliot with scrutiny. "You still deal with it, don't you."

"Not much gets past you, does it Nate?" he says, a lump forming in his throat. He hadn't been able to deflect or excuse enough to his satisfaction. He was going to have to tell him. He was going to have to tell him and hope for the best.

"Something that was essential to treat, but wasn't going to kill you. Something you've had for forever, yet couldn't wait to fix. It sounds like a riddle." he muses, tracing a finger around the edge of the glass, a soft whine escaping into the air.

"Oh, I probably would have ended up dead. But not from a disease." he says, one last clue, because there were exactly zero places he felt safe saying those words, and an airport bar in San Lorenzo wasn't an exception.

Eliot can see the exact moment it all clicks for Nate, his finger stops tracing the glass and he looks at him, really looks at him, like he's a stranger and not someone he's worked with for over three years. He opens his mouth, then pauses, pulls out his phone. He considers running then, but some tiny part of him that sounds suspiciously like Sophie says wait. Give him a chance.

A text arrives to his cell phone, Boston area code. Saving contacts is a rookie move, can provide information to captors, and they cycle through numbers so quickly that it would be mostly pointless anyway.

'You worked for Damien Moreau to get the money to medically transition.'

"Yes." he breathes out, muscles in his arms already tense, ready to block a punch. He doesn't have to. Nathan Ford is already shrugging back on his jacket, dropping a few bills to pay for the drinks.

"Well then, I assume the situation is handled. I will see you in two weeks, Eliot." he says, walking away briskly.

Eliot never figured he'd come out to Nate, not really. He did entertain the possibility that he might be outed, and what might happen after. He didn't hold out much hope that it'd be smooth. While it was hardly ideal, how it had happened, it was about the best outcome to be expected. Nate would file this information in his library of facts, hold it alongside Eliot's hatred of beets and perfect pitch. It was more significant than those two, certainly, but it wasn't important to Nate. That meant a great deal to him.

'Thanks for the beer.' he texts, popping the bottle open.

He knows Nate can read the truth between the lines.

**Author's Note:**

> i like nate as a character and appreciate him as such
> 
> but to tell you the truth
> 
> i wouldn't hang out with him


End file.
